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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Jacob Appel On Being Indie

On "Being Indie" is a blog series that introduces us to a wide variety of independent authors, publishers, and booksellers as they discuss what being indie means to them.

Jacob M. Appel’s first novel, The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand
Up, won the 2012 Dundee International Book Award and was published by
Cargo. His short story collection, Scouting for the Reaper, won
the 2012 Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2014.
His most recent books include a novel, The Biology of Luck (Elephant
Rock, 2013), an essay collection, Phoning Home (University of South
Carolina Press, 2014) and a short story collection, Einstein’s Beach House
(Pressgang/Butler University, 2014). Jacob’s short fiction has appeared
in more than two hundred literary journals including Gettysburg Review, Michigan
Quarterly, Southwest Review, Threepenny Review and Virginia
Quarterly Review. His prose has won the Boston Review Short
Fiction Competition, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for the Short
Story, the Dana Award, the Arts & Letters Prize for Fiction, the North
American Review’s Kurt Vonnegut Prize, the Missouri Review’s
Editor’s Prize, the Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, the Briar Cliff
Review’s Short Fiction Prize, the Salem College Center for Women Writers’
Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, the H. E. Francis Prize, the New Millennium
Writings Fiction Award on four occasions, an Elizabeth George Fellowship and a
Sherwood Anderson Foundation Writers Grant. His stories have been
short-listed for the O. Henry Award (2001), Best American Short
Stories (2007, 2008, 2013), Best American Nonrequired Reading (2007,
2008), and the Pushcart Prize anthology (2005, 2006, 2011, 2014).
In 2003, he was honored with Brown’s Undergraduate Council of Students
Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. He is currently on the
faculty of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

I
imagine most aspiring authors, at some point in their careers, have conjured up
similar visions of their literary futures.
In my rendering of this collective fantasy, I prefect my first
manuscript and send it off to a handful of high-end New York City agents, who
claw each other’s eyes out scrambling to represent it. A similar battle royal the next day blinds
several of the city’s leading editors, but results in a seven or eight digit
book deal. The publishing house then
suspends production on several of its best-selling novels—and even diverts
resources from its chain of Dutch radio stations and Austrian record labels—in
order to print my volume on the spot. A
few weeks later, after my masterpiece appears in bookstores to glowing reviews,
the German overlords at my publishing house dispatch me on a book tour that
includes the great capitals of Europe and joint readings with Philip Roth and
Salman Rushdie. By the end of my first
month of literary stardom, I have a nine-book deal that could bankrupt many
African nations, my face is as recognizable as Muhammad Ali’s, and I’m dating a
besotted Karen Russell, who pledges to dedicate her future Nobel Prizes all to
me.

Needless
to say, the literary life rarely follows that trajectory. Certainly, this was not my path to
publication. (I was just grateful not to
have followed in the footsteps of John Kennedy Toole, the author of A Confederacy of Dunces, whose mother
was only able to find a publisher for his manuscript after his suicide.) When my first agent proved unable to sell my
first novel, I despaired. When my second
agent proved unable to sell my second novel, I grumbled. In hindsight, as my fourth agent now attempts
to sell my fourth novel, I look back with some relief that those first two
agents—both very talented, I must add—didn’t secure me a small deal with a
major publishing house, because such a deal was a recipe for failure. After all, most first novels fare poorly and
are rapidly remaindered. That leads to disappointment
and makes publishing a chart-topping fourth novel (my current plan) all the
more difficult.

I am very fortunate to have
publishing six books with six very distinct, small to mid-sized independent
publishers: two literary novels (The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up with Cargo
and The Biology of Luck with Elephant
Rock); a mystery, Wedding Wipeout,
with Cozy Cat Press; an essay collection, Phoning
Home, with the University of South Carolina Press; and a pair of short
story collections (Scouting for the
Reaper with Black Lawrence and Einstein’s
Beach House with Butler University’s Pressgang). I have been able to connect with readers and
to build up a fan base that will help me promote future books, a painstaking
yet rewarding process that would not likely have been possible with one of the
big five houses. Along the way, I have
learned that the keys to successful independent publishing are threefold: generosity, creativity and relentlessness.

The first step in marketing any book
is valuing readership over profit. Some
writers are insulted when a friend or even a stranger asks for a free copy of
their book. I make a point of being
flattered. To the degree that I am
financially able, I give away copies to those who ask, knowing that if they
enjoy my work, they are likely to recommend it to others. I make a point of giving copies to
salesclerks in shops where I read, to all fellow readers at public events, and
to local libraries whenever I visit them for research. Obviously, few if any of us have the
resources to give away tens of thousands of hard copies of our
publications. A hundred well-placed
copies, or even a dozen, can generate both sales and long term interest. There is no pride or value in being pennywise
and pound foolish.

The second step in marketing a
book—and particularly an independent book—is to exercise the same creativity in
marketing as one did in writing. I am
frequently amazed that authors who generate imaginative plots and
highly-original characters prove unable to generate marketing plans that extend
much beyond placing their books on Amazon and hoping strangers will invest in
them. Far better to engage in wild and
zany guerilla tactics. I am reluctant to
share my own yet—but keep your eyes open and feel free to copy.

The third step, and this cannot be
emphasized enough, is relentlessness. Make your own rain. Go anywhere you’re invited. I once gave a reading for one single patron
in a small town bookstore, and sold precisely one book—but that’s one more book
than I would have sold without doing the reading. Relentlessness means reaching out
constantly: to booksellers, reading
venues, libraries, other authors and even directly to potential readers. It also means that you have to keep on
writing. You’ll want to publish book
reviews and articles and short stories that draw attention to your byline and
continued interest in your work. While
it might be lovely to retire on one brilliant book a la Harper Lee, this is a
poor career plan to bank on.

Finally, a trusting, ongoing
relationship with ones publishers is essential.
If you spend your energies scrutinizing your royalty checks for errors,
or gripe over typos, you are not using your limited emotional resources
effectively. Never forget that the
person most responsible for marketing your book isn’t the publisher; it is
you. However, in my experience, the
effort you put in as an author is often met with a matching effort by publishers. Independents cannot afford to support all of
their authors equally, so they devote their time and connections to helping
those authors who are already helping themselves.

I am very pleased with my tiny
below-the-radar-screen niche in the world of independent publishing. I can boast that I am a published author at
high school reunions. My grandmother is
proud. That being said, if you’re a
Teutonic media conglomerate interested in offering me an eight figure book
deal, or you’re Salman Rushdie and you’d like to do a joint reading, my
loyalties to independent publishing might prove reasonably negotiable.

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Who's That Girl?

I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.